Review: The Mac mini takes the Ivy Bridge to Fusion Town

New CPUs, USB 3, and optional Fusion make for a nice shiny package.

The littlest Mac of them all, the Mac mini, was updated in late October. The last time we took a look at the mini was in July 2011, when Ryan Paul examined the mini's suitability as a Home Theater PC (HTPC); he had some positive and some negative things to say about the shiny metal cuboid. The new mini improves on the old in several substantial ways, but the most notable thing about the latest revision is that it's currently the only Mac you can buy which comes equipped with Apple's Fusion Drive technology. Fusion Drive "fuses" together a solid state drive and a traditional spinning hard disk drive into a single volume, and does some interesting tricks to tier data between the two different physical drives.

We've said quite a bit about Fusion Drive on Ars, culminating with our big hands-on post, but the mini is worth looking at by itself, too. The mid-tier version comes with a punchy Ivy Bridge Intel Core i7 processor, which makes it one of the fastest computers in my house right now; it's quiet, quick, and it's at least vaguely affordable. Well, kind of.

The price of entry

The mini comes in three flavors: an entry-level version with a dual-core Ivy Bridge i5 and 4GB of RAM, a mid-level version with a quad-core i7 and 4GB of RAM, and a server version with a quad-core Ivy Bridge i7, two hard drives, and OS X Server. Out of these three, only the mid-tier model can be ordered with Fusion Drive, though the server variety can optionally be configured with one or two 256GB SSDs. Because we wanted to both evaluate the mini itself and Fusion Drive, went with the mid-tier version. Aside from adding the Fusion Drive, it is otherwise exactly as listed on Apple's website.

The current low-profile form factor was introduced in July of 2011 and brought with it support for Apple and Intel's then-new Thunderbolt technology (formerly known as Lightpeak). Apple apologists opined that the inclusion of the high-speed Thunderbolt port on the mini obviated the need for USB 3, though in the year since the Thunderbolt-equipped mini launched, Thunderbolt devices haven't really gained much in popularity and the ecosystem is looking a little bland. USB 3, on the other hand, is popping up in devices everywhere.

The new mini rectifies the oversight and comes with an entire slew of USB 3 ports on the back, enabling it to attach to the entire broad set of fast peripherals which use the standard. If you can forego the Core i7 and the upgraded storage, then you can stick with the base model mini. At $599, it is the least-expensive way to get your hands on OS X. The specs are still quite nice for a small-form-factor desktop, and the base mini serves as a gateway drug for Mac newbies and would-be iOS developers who dream of churning out the next Angry Birds.

Unpacking

The mini's packaging is simple, and the computer comes with few pack-ins. Aside from the mini itself, the box contains a small instruction booklet with the requisite Apple stickers, an HDMI-to-DVI adapter, and a power cable. The mini's internal power supply means that the power cable is just that, and the computer needs no unsightly wall wart to function. This is a good thing.

Externally, the mini is unchanged from its predecessor. When looking at the two next to each other, they are indistinguishable.

Enlarge/ Can you tell which one is the new mini? Honestly, neither can I. I think it's the bottom one.

Lee Hutchinson

Things look mostly the same on the inside, too, though this mini is equipped with Fusion Drive. In addition to the HDD, it sports a 2.5" Samsung 830-based SATA III solid state disk in its lower drive bay, connected to the L-shaped motherboard via a custom connector.

Enlarge/ The mini, with the bottom cover removed. Visible is the Airport Wi-Fi antenna at top, the RAM at right, and the system's single fan.

Lee Hutchinson

Enlarge/ The mini, partly disassembled. Visible at top is the Samsung SSD.

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars

" Given the interdependence of the two physical disks in the Fusion Drive volume and the mixed layout of the boot and recovery partitions across the disks, a failure of either SSD or HDD will knock your Fusion Drive volume offline."

we know that for sure? i haven't kept up but i thought all system files would be kept to the SSD assuring it would act as a bootable partition if the other HDD failed.

I do one better than run time machine. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a clone of my boot drive every morning. That way if my boot drive dies, I have an exact copy I can boot from immediately. I've been thinking about installing fusion on my, ahem non Apple Mac, and I think I'll do it.

So if you're worried about having data strewn across two drives, create a daily clone and that risk goes away.

" Given the interdependence of the two physical disks in the Fusion Drive volume and the mixed layout of the boot and recovery partitions across the disks, a failure of either SSD or HDD will knock your Fusion Drive volume offline."

we know that for sure? i haven't kept up but i thought all system files would be kept to the SSD assuring it would act as a bootable partition if the other HDD failed.

I was talking more like an actual live failure--like, you're in the middle of doing something & your SSD dies. You're dead in the water at that point. You'd probably see some spectacular weird errors and a KP. The recovery partition lives on the HDD, so if you were to then reboot, you'd be able to get into the recovery partition and try to run the included version of Disk Utility.

If the HDD dies while you're in the middle of doing something, same deal--you're dead. On reboot, you'd probably get a flashy question mark, and you'd have to Command-R and do Internet Recovery.

You asked for it, here I am. I have a 2012 mid-range mini, with no Fusion drive, connected to a Dell monitor via HDMI to DVI cable and I see the dropouts every 30-60 mins. The screen goes black for 1-2 seconds then comes back. However, a possible fix may be caused by me being dumb. I didn't realize the mini came with a HDMI to DVI converter, so when I ordered the mini I ordered a thunderbolt to DVI converter from Monoprice. Since hooking that I haven't seen any dropouts. Could be coincidence, but you never know.

At $599, even the entry-level Mac is more expensive than competing offerings

Doesn't that depend on how you define 'competing offerings'? If you compare the Mini with equivalently-specced mini-towers from Dell or whoever, then sure, it's more expensive. But if your point of comparison is similarly-sized small-form-factor machines, it's less clear. For instance, Anandtech had a review up earlier today of a machine that's roughly the same size and innards as the Mini and it cost $680 for a config similar to the $600 base Mini (the extra $80 basically buys you a Blu-Ray drive, which may or may not be important depending on personal desires).

"Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and handles all of the non-Apple product reviews."

Were all the other Mac-aligned reviewers at Ars busy or something? I know it doesn't say that Lee can't review Apple products - it's just that we have enough people like Jacqui and Chris who normally do that, and we're still waiting for the Ubuntu 12.10 review despite this getting more attention because it's... an Apple product.

This one turned out to be kind of a two-fer, since the main purpose of getting the mini in hand was for me to dive into Fusion Drive. We figured that as long as I had the thing in front of me that it wasn't that much extra work to also spend another few days with it on and off and do the review. Simple expediency.

Would this quadcore i7 system benefit from the 8GB RAM upgrade offered through the online store? Is 4GB enough these days? With both my current systems (1st gen MacMini and 13" MacBook) I went for the base grade memory option at purchase and have since regretted it, even though in both cases the onset of regret took quite a while to arrive :-).

Why burn the occasional Linux CD? I use bootable USB sticks, and they're so cheap you can give them away. Also for a live Linux USB>CD.

Because a couple of times a year I upgrade or reload my firewall, and Smoothwall Roadster Mk2 Mod 0.2 is a PITA to install on the box I'm using with USB sticks. Getting into the problems and the workarounds would take a whole lot of back and forth; rather than dealing with the workarounds and weirdness, it's far easier to just plug in a USB CD-ROM and install from that.

Would this quadcore i7 system benefit from the 8GB RAM upgrade offered through the online store? Is 4GB enough these days? With both my current systems (1st gen MacMini and 13" MacBook) I went for the base grade memory option at purchase and have since regretted it, even though in both cases the onset of regret took quite a while to arrive :-).

Any thoughts?

It is cheaper to buy additional memory from a 3rd party store. Stick with the base 4GB from Apple and see how things go. You can always add more when you need it.

At $599, for the base model, its an excellent offering. I have used the older gen mac minis for firewalls. I run pfsense on them coupled with a cheap managed L2 switch (Procurves for under $500). The gig interface allows for tagged vlans. It isnt just the form factor, the power usage is amazing with the builtin power supply. For about a $1000 you get a kick ass firewall with a 24 gig port managed switch. The cheapest ciscos, junipers, fortinets, <insert comercial firewall> are $1000s of dollars. I haven't got the latest version yet but I plan to very soon.

Note that other vendors that have similar form factors use external PS that are bulky and add to the cobweb of wires not to mention the heat. At this price, form factor and wattage usage it is one of the best x86 offerings out there. THe only bad thing I can say about this is that it runs MAC OSX. Run FreeBSD/Pfsense or FreeNAS on it for a home system and it rocks. Quiet and fast.

I got the standard (1TB spinning drive) i7 model a couple of days ago and put 16GB RAM in it because I intend to run some VMs via Parallels. It's a very nice machine; quiet, responsive, excellent display (running 1920x1200 here).

While it's not for gaming, it will run Portal 2 at full resolution very nicely and there's quite the catalogue of older games that work just fine on it, like all the Half-Life series. Took my Win7 machine and plugged it into the TV for any future serious gaming needs.

I had originally intended to wait for the new iMacs to be released, but then realized that I'd have a newish monitor that I'd have no use for elsewhere. I was already using Mac wired keyboards anyway, so the Mini was a perfect fit. It cost more than it should have, in my opinion, but I'm glad I got it.

Would this quadcore i7 system benefit from the 8GB RAM upgrade offered through the online store? Is 4GB enough these days? With both my current systems (1st gen MacMini and 13" MacBook) I went for the base grade memory option at purchase and have since regretted it, even though in both cases the onset of regret took quite a while to arrive :-).

Any thoughts?

(a) None of us are psychic an we have no idea how you use your mac, or the state of your finances. If you plan to use it as an HTPC, 4GB is probably fine. If you use it as a professional running Photoshop, maybe not.

(b) It has user replaceable RAM, no (unlike some of the earlier minis) ? So it's hardly the end of the world if you get too little RAM.

Right--replacing the RAM is easy (see the pic of the mini's guts--you pop the bottom off and the slots are right there), and you can go and buy a pack of 2x 8GB PC12800 SODIMMs for like $60. Never buy RAM from Apple. 16GB as a BTO option costs $300, and that's just crazy-talk.

The Bad At $599, even the entry-level Mac is more expensive than competing offerings

I remember looking a while back, but there really isn't much comparable in this form factor. Examples of these comparable competing offerings.

Quote:

Fusion Drive's hands-off nature is bound to upset control-freak geeks

I guess I qualify. I would prefer to just manage separate drives myself. I really don't pushing all HD activity through the SSD eating up the precious cycle life.

Quote:

Not terribly repairable—replacing the SSD or HDD is a pain

I don't expect much else to be repairable here, but yes fighting to change a HD/SSD sucks.

Overall, not a bad package, if you get the base model, and do the necessary fighting to upgrade RAM/SSD/HD yourself.

Let me point out once again something that always seems to come as a surprise to Windows folks.(a) OSX can boot off any drive(b) Apple has a perfectly fine SW RAID system built into the OS.

What this means is that if an internal drive dies, there is nothing to stop you hooking up a USB3 drive and booting off that. Not as nice and clean, but quite feasible. No fighting the packaging required.

Likewise, if you need more storage, you can probably do what you want with one or two or three external USB3 drives (if necessary joined together as a JBOD, or striped array, to make a larger disk) and some clever use of symlinks.

As for RAM upgrades, that is an Apple supported upgrade that consists of twisting off the bottom of the mac mini and popping out the RAM. If that's fighting the computer, I'm not sure what you expect --- that it comes with a mini-robot that you simply tell "change the RAM for me"?

One of the best Macs ever engineered, and faster than my 2009 Mac Pro in all ways. We use these as the backbone of our business, having replaced ugly Mac towers (which Apple refuses to support anyway) with these sleek mothers. We order Mac Mini servers and replace one of the hard drive with a good SSD from OWC (note, buy these from http://www.bhphotovideo.com/, they are cheaper than OWC's own prices). Then you have a good solid business machine with good graphics (not too good, we are working here), an SSD for everything you need, and the second HDD inside for Time Machine backups. All for a reasonable price that's elegant, efficient, and silent.

Wish I could get one of these new machines but I'm waiting for the new iMac.

Is bootcamp still restricted to 32-bit Windows? The last time I looked into a Mac Mini I'm fairly sure it was officially incompatible with 64-bit Windows 7 for some reason. I've been eyeing one off as a HTPC but don't want it running OSX.

"At $599, even the entry-level Mac is more expensive than competing offerings"What competing offerings? Everything else even close to this small runs Atom (eeewwww)

Other than the barebones Intel linked in the comments, there's also VisionX from AsRock (scroll a bit down). You can do the Fusion stuff yourself with the AsRock as it supports a second 2"5 drive.

The Intel offering is identical in size, the AsRock is larger, but has a Blu-ray combo drive to show for it.

The ASRock also has ASRock's warranty support which is poor compared to AppleCare, and reports (in the AT review) about overheating and high failure rates. You'd have to be an Apple hater to pick a that particular PC over the mini. I'm not saying that the mini is the right mini PC for everyone. I built myself a Brazos based Foxconn barebones instead of a mini, but I understand that it is in no way comparable to a mini.

Would this quadcore i7 system benefit from the 8GB RAM upgrade offered through the online store? Is 4GB enough these days? With both my current systems (1st gen MacMini and 13" MacBook) I went for the base grade memory option at purchase and have since regretted it, even though in both cases the onset of regret took quite a while to arrive :-).

Any thoughts?

(a) None of us are psychic an we have no idea how you use your mac, or the state of your finances. If you plan to use it as an HTPC, 4GB is probably fine. If you use it as a professional running Photoshop, maybe not.

(b) It has user replaceable RAM, no (unlike some of the earlier minis) ? So it's hardly the end of the world if you get too little RAM.

Genuine Big Thanks for wiseing me up. I'll be more careful about asking dumb questions next time. Though in my own defense, getting cheap 3rd party upgrades is not that straightforward here in Bali!

I am pleasantly surprised to see how much comment this article has generated. I've learned heaps already!